I hate generic teams. Do you?

'Sup Smogonites! I haven't made a post on Smogon for quite a while, especially a thread. The reason behind this is not the release of Black Ops 2, although I do play it frequently I have the time to visit my favourite forum. But the OU RMT forum has been plagued with endless amounts of threads named 'OU Rain', 'My first team' and 'OU Weatherless'. Like having a weatherless team is something that should be congratulated, something that should be recognised as great skill for not having control over their opponents field.
So anyway, this forum is littered and to be honest the metagame needs to change. I wouldn't mind the constant cookie-cutter trash if it wasn't so...cookie-cutter. So I thought I'd make something different that will still work.

Rant over.

This is 'Another Day in England', mainly because living in Britain, like I do, brings you perpetual rain, and if I'm honest, the British Iles would be the perfect place for an OU Pokemon battle if they actually existed, hahaa. By the way, if anyone else can see the Tornadus and Garchomp sprites moving exceptionally fast, let me know and I can try to fix it, otherwise it may just be a bug on my laptop.
Without further ado:

NOTE: SOME DESCRIPTIONS CAN BE CONFUSING DUE TO TEAM CHANGES, eg, Garchomp used to run Substitute, and now doesn't, so may talk about Substitute in the description. The team is always changing and I'm not sure if I want to change the description every time I alter something.

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Yeah, I'm not going to lie. Scizor used to be extremely overused. I think in DPP it was the number one most used Pokemon? But with the prevelance of Genesect, Scizor's usage rates have dropped massively. I've always loved Scizor, and thought I'd use him as a starting point.

I wanted to make a solid core for my Red Menace. I had started with a Kingdra incorporating Swift Swim+Rain Dance, but it was just too weak, even the DDance variants didn't work well for me. I thought, manually setting up Rain Dance for only about 6 turns was never really worth going through the trouble. So I undoubtedly ended up incorporating Politoed, and along with that came the second half of my core, Feraligatr. Now he's a beauty under the rain, and is ridiculously underrated. Instead of the Swift Swim which would benefit this team on paper, I got priority STAB rain-boosted Aqua Jet, which is always a plus!

I needed a solid backup sweeper, something that could tank at least one hit and would be able to dish a few out. As now I didn't have Kingdra, I also needed a Dragon-type. With no shame I brought Garchomp into the team, as I see him as the Invisible Threat - something everyone prepares their team against but never seems to have the courtesy to show up against those prepared. Its pretty much a beast that not alot of people use anymore, so that's where people like me can use it to our advantage.

At this point, I was starting to really like the look of the team. But trying to be even more original, I wanted to use some sort of mini-strategy. So I thought of self-producing strategies for one Pokemon that didn't include Spore or set-up moves, as Spore is cheap as hell and I already have three Pokemon running set-up in my team overall (after Tornadus). My mind turned to Salac Berry and Empoleon. I thought, a Water-type and a Steel that doesn't clash with Scizor's typing. But then I remembered, it may look good on paper but it is BAD in competitive OU. So I searched the OU Tier a bit, saw Tornadus with Prankster. Prankster + Sub + Salac = MADNESS.

I needed the last member of my team. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to fill the slot, but I knew I wanted something bulky. I didn't want to use Blissey, as I've used it so often in the past, namely in Blissey/Slowbro cores, but I still wanted something resistant to the current meta. I found Reuniclus. And he is perfect.

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One of the biggest contributing factors towards this team's success, my Careful Scizor. This is a custom set I made for myself back in the days of DPP, where Special Attacks were very much at the heart of the metagame - it is still the case, and in my opinion always will be. Careful Scizor allows safe switch-ins against Psychic, Scald, and under rain, even a Genesect's Flamethrower. Rain cuts in half damage from any Fire attacks, dousing a confident 90 base power Fthrower to a puny 45. Against a 196+ SpDef Scizor, quad effectiveness doesn't even matter. This is, in my opinion, by far the most solid Scizor set and I abuse to the maximum. Unfortunately, it will never get the upper hand on a speed-invested Heatran, but Scizor has been known to OHKO a SpDef+HP+SpA Heatran by outspeeding it with a Superpower. Scizor's mission is to pretty much get up a Swords Dance on a switch or weaker Pokemon such as Starmie, and wreak havoc among the opponent utilising a barrage of STAB Technician Life Orb boosted Bullet Punches. But if I can outlive an attack, then may turn to the more powerful option. Life Orb is, and always has been a plus and a minus, as Scizor goes sweeping multiple Pokes quite frequently, he sustains about 40-50% of only Life Orb damage when he gets a streak on.

Anyone who has ever said Pokemon from UU don't work in OU should be hanged. The worst part is, I'm not even joking. Feraligatr has so much synergy with Scizor, countering one of its main threats, Heatran, revenge kills those which are knocked down to just about 6% from a dodgy Bullet Punch, and pretty much Aqua Jets everything that doesn't resist it. Its potential is actually scary under rain. Aqua Jet - Priority. Base 40 Power. STAB. Mystic Water boost. Drizzle rain boost. That is just off the bat. Powered with Torrent, it is virtually unstoppable if you don't have a Pokemon with Water Absorb.
I don't know, I've always liked Feraligatr. The Water starters have always lured me to choose them. Apart from Oshawatt. I mean, what the fuck was that?

You know, I don't even know what to say about Garchomp. I seriously don't. I have wondered if using a Yache Berry variant like the old times would suit him better, and it would give me another attacking move over it. I suppose it protects me from Ice Shard. But I suppose Yache Berry would do that as well.
Hahaa, check me having a conversation with myself on the description of a Pokemon. Garchomp has always performed exceptionally, and we're both incredibly confused as to why Mamoswine has no usage. It is the perfect counter to any sweeper, and namely, Garchomp/Gliscor/Landy-T.

I know the colour looks bad. But its the only colour that would really be visible and would work for a flying-type.
Probably one of my most creative sets, and by far one of the most effective. Tornadus can take on multiple roles, from lead to whole team sweeper to wallbreaker. This amazing cloud ogre with its perfect ability has one of the most underrated offensive capabilities in the game. It smashes the shit out of Volcarona with Taunt and Hurricane, loses nothing but a 30% accuracy drop in any opposing weather, but it never stopped people running Focus Blast! The game-plan is to Substitute down to the Salac Berry abusing Prankster to always go first, and then when the Salac Berry kicks in it is reassured to be faster than anything that they have. Salac boosts Tornadus' speed by one stage, which is a 1.5x boost, and basically does what a Choice Scarf does without any drawbacks! Sure, you're at 25% health or less, but fuck that you're behind a Substitute!

Magic Guard is such a good ability. It has confused so many players as for some reason, most think that I'm using Regenerator and try to Toxic or Will-o-Wisp me...mistake. I can have a safe entrance on Rocks and proceed to set up Calm Minds, which is always great. I don't know why anyone uses him anymore, and to be honest, I don't care. All I know is that unprepared or ill-structured teams get mowed down by him and he is a bitch to get rid of. Even through playing Pokemon Black I discovered that he's a bitch to kill when he was under the command of the opposition in the Pokemon League. Of course it was like 15 levels higher than me, but for something with an atrocious set and no EVs, it does pretty well for itself in that game.

Here he is. The man himself, the face of hatred for originality and experimental teams that used to make the metagame such a brilliant thing to be in. Politoed and his brothers and sister, Ninetales, Abomasnow and Tyranitar, laugh in the face of creativity and all that is good, and decide to piss all over it. Words cannot express how much I hate those four pricks, and all that they've done to the metagame. Its not their fault though, its the douchebag owners that force them to extract abilities from their dreams.
This Politoed is a pretty standard Special Defense variant, sporting 3 defensive moves and that hot kettle water attack that seems to have much higher chance of burning than its print suggests. There's really nothing I would like to say about Toed, as I only use it to set up weather then kick it out of the game completely. God I hate the thing.

Oh god, the RMT is finished. Well, that took a ridiculously long time to do the layout and all of that.Remember to leave a comment.Subliminal messaging in a way right there, hahaa. But seriously, it would help if you made a suggestion, even a praise if you want to just get your post count up.

This has been Yeezy D, and 'Another Day in England'. The team currently holds a 90% WIN RATIO (20:25ENGtime, Nov 24th), pretty much all I did was play 10 games and managed to win 9/10 of them with quite little effort. The one game I lost was ridiculously close and came down to a bad misplay on my part on switching in Scizor from a misclick and he got paralyzed on the switch, which lead to parahax and me losing the game. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed my team, ask if you wanted the Imp/Exportable code, but unless you contribute there's very little chance you'll get it. That's just the way it is.​

after an SD this guy has increadible power being able to ko threats such as ferrothron who you will need to oh through power power or face destruction. Rain is a must for this set scrfices the power of water fall for it and you've got that covered, while the hp leave feraligatr bulky they often allow him to take a hit into the torrent range and allow him to pick off threats with easy such as gengar terrakion ect. I found ice punch to be the best choice as other wise he is dragon bait. Sword dance allows increadible power on feraligtr and is his only viable set atm.

I cannot stress how highly i recomened this set as this has allowed me to peka at 5th with my gatr team depite my issue with battle gitters and in scizor, tornadous and garchomp you've got him covered, but either way i'd either ditch ice punch for crunch for jellfish and possiblyy think about beefing up dragon defences for dragonite who will rape scizor after a dd as he switches out or pack a solid counter to the jellfish, reculoius is pretty dead wieght in this metagame and celebi/shaymin/roserade seems like a decent option too to replace it and rape the fish.

Hopes this helps, my team was called gatrade if you want to look at it.

Hey Yeezy, creative team that works here. I have a couple changes that should work well for you. Some of these spreads (Scizor especially) look very well done, props for that. About Scizor, that set is surprising, and I think you can enhance that effect by running Metal Coat over Life Orb. This way, you can bluff a Choice Item while not having recoil and keeping your main attack's (Bullet Punch) power up. That's an easy change, just see how it feels. Next we have Gatr. He's a good lure for your team, but I think he can be a fearsome sweeper with little changes. Try this set:

This set is an even better sweeper, and will compensate for what I'm about to change. Your team lacks Stealth Rocks, which are pretty much needed by every team. You're also noticeably short on Ttar switch-ins. That's why I'm going to say change Garchomp to a speedy bulky set, seen here:

This set allows you to check a lot of Physical attackers while still being offensive, as this is an offensive team. Rocky Helmet + Rough Skin hits things for like 30% per turn, making this a hard thing to check with Skarm, who has to hit it with Brave Bird. It's a cool set that I think fits. Try these changes and I think this team can get even better.

Hey Yeezy, creative team that works here. I have a couple changes that should work well for you. Some of these spreads (Scizor especially) look very well done, props for that. About Scizor, that set is surprising, and I think you can enhance that effect by running Metal Coat over Life Orb. This way, you can bluff a Choice Item while not having recoil and keeping your main attack's (Bullet Punch) power up. That's an easy change, just see how it feels. Next we have Gatr. He's a good lure for your team, but I think he can be a fearsome sweeper with little changes. Try this set:

This set is an even better sweeper, and will compensate for what I'm about to change. Your team lacks Stealth Rocks, which are pretty much needed by every team. You're also noticeably short on Ttar switch-ins. That's why I'm going to say change Garchomp to a speedy bulky set, seen here:

This set allows you to check a lot of Physical attackers while still being offensive, as this is an offensive team. Rocky Helmet + Rough Skin hits things for like 30% per turn, making this a hard thing to check with Skarm, who has to hit it with Brave Bird. It's a cool set that I think fits. Try these changes and I think this team can get even better.

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Yes this set would work better for the team garchomp that is but he need lo if he wnats to ko jelly after a swords dance or ferrothorn too, my poin is life orb is a must over mystic which is rather useless anyways to net crucial ko's

Please tell me, when is Aqua Jet most powerful? Torrent boosted. And to be boosted by Torrent, then Gatr must be below 33%, making a Life Orb counterproductive... And Jellicent doesn't need to be OHKO'd, I've seen Jellicent run Waterfall over Crunch to nuke Skarm, it's all preference. But Mystic Water is a must

Yo, thanks for your feedback I appreciate it. I'm going to have to pass on giving Feraligatr Life Orb, as Mystic Water is brilliant for Aqua Jet, and Feraligatr is relatively frail, so Life Orb damage would only allow it about 2 moves if it has sustained damage while setting up Swords.

I'm going to try out Crackstar's sets, as they look pretty good. The Chomp set is intriguing, as I've only seen Rocky Helmet on a Ferrothorn I used to use. But I suppose Chomp with it could be viable? I'm going to definetely give your sets a try, and will be back with results before making any final decisions, obviously.

Also, thanks for the credit on my Scizor set, I'm incredibly proud of it hahaa!

EDIT: Crackstar, I changed the spread to 160 HP / 96 Atk / 252 Spd? I just didn't like the look of no method of Attack boosting and only 303 Attack. HP is 397 now, just under the 400 mark but still pretty high?

I got your VM, so I decided to stop by and give you a rate. You've got a pretty good team already in my opinion. I like your Tornadus set the most, and I could definitely see that getting work done. I'll focus on some small changes for your team since it's already solid.

First, try Focus Sash Garchomp. I think that's the best item for lead Garchomp. You can catch some Lati@s' and other fast dragons off guard. Ferrothorn sometimes thinks it can set up, and you can just kill it with Fire Blast. SR Focus Sash Garchomp basically wins a match vs. Sun by itself. Sun can't easily kill Garchomp, and they have a lot of difficulty with Stealth Rock. Forretress comes in, and you can just use Fire Blast for the KO. Focus Sash guarantees you get the job done.

On Feraligatr, you should definitely squeeze Swords Dance somewhere in its moveset. At +2, Feraligatr KOes just about everything. I saw a calc where it OHKO'd max Defense Skarmory. It was pretty crazy. I'd recommend you drop Ice Punch for Swords Dance personally. Crunch is a good move for beating Jellicent. Waterfall and Aqua Jet should to plenty of damage vs. Dragons, so I don't think you have to worry there.

Finally, I'd recommend Trick Room Reuniclus instead of Calm Mind Reuniclus. Calm Mind is pretty mediocre these days. Usually it dies before it gets to set up because of all the high powered Water moves. Genesect and Scizor are other obvious liabilities. Your team is pretty offensive, and I think Trick Room would better mesh with the pace of your team. If all else fails, it can help you set up Scizor too.

Hey thanks for getting back to me, I think halfway through you writing the rate I had actually edited the team with the changes for Feraligatr's spread and set, as it has been working consistently enough to be put in the actual team.

If you could give me a new set for Chomp, I'd be willing to test it out, but as of now Crackstar gave me quite an original set that includes Rough SkinHelmet, which suprisingly works very well as a solid switch-in. Also, how well would Fire Blast function in the rain? I mean, I know its a good Sun-counter but I very rarely lose the Weather war so I'm sort of iffy about using it. I will put it through testing regardless.

Also, thank you for the comment on the Tornadus set, its ridiculously good, and is like a wrecking ball to unprepared teams. There have been a number of cases where I might get a clip going 6-0 with Tornadus and they rage quit, which is pretty annoying as you can guess hahaa

Hey, I got your request. Your team looks creative, which is a good thing to go, and I like it a lot. However, there's still something to be improved.

For starter, I don't like your EV spread on Scizor. Investing in Special Defense when your HP stat is left uninvested means getting a small improvement in terms of special bulk while lowering considerably your physical bulk. Consider the following calculations:

As you can see, your physical bulk is going down very significantly, while your special one is not that much affected. For this reason I suggest dropping the SpD EVs and investing in HP, for a spread similar to this: 192 HP / 232 Atk / 4 SpD / 80 Spe Careful (the 4 SpD EVs are removed from HP since we want a LO number).

Second, I suggest using a Timid Nature on Tornadus. Of course, you want to have all the power you can, but Scarf Keldeo and Scarf Terrakion are really common, and those can screw you even after the Salac boost (you can't have a Sub all the time, especially if they have a priority attacker, which is again very common).

Third, I like undisputed's suggestion on Garchomp, although the halved power of Fire Blast in rain can be a concern. An alternative can be to use Swords Dance in the last slot: if you manage to keep your Sash intact while setting up SR, you can use it to get a free boost and attempt a sweep with your awesome STAB coverage. I also completely second his idea of Trick Room Reuniclus, which could incidentally work well with Scizor and Feraligatr: they both have low Speed, so under TR they can spam their most powerful STAB without recurring to priority.

Last thing, I already expressed my dislike for SpD Politoed in some recent RMT, it's so frail to the physical side that can be easily Pursuited / worn down by U-Turns / whatever, but I didn't find a good replacement here. If you don't run into these problem often, well feel free to ignore this!

Thanks for the reply, I've read it over. Now the spread on Scizor is suited to its weaknesses - with this spread it will always get the upper hand on Genesect under rain with a Superpower, and its never been brought to my attention that the spread needs to change. I like SpDef Scizor, it allows me to come in on the abundance of special attacks that approach me, and of course the very common Scald that is boosted in my rain. Nevertheless, as always, I will playtest the changes, and its quite common that Scizor takes a huge chunk from physical attack anyway, disregarding whether or not EVs are put into use.

I will try out the new Garchomp set you provided, but I have to say the Chomp set Crackstar gave is quite an effective gimmick:')

I'm not a great team rater but I really think you should change your Tornadus to Timid, lets it revenge things like Terrakion/Latios/Keldeo without the speed boost, plus you are still outsped by Scarfed Terra/Keldeo (both very very common.)

I felt a personal twinge about my own OU Weatherless team lol, but that is besides the point here.

I love the idea of a specially defensive Scizor. I didn't play competitively from Sapphire onwards, so a lot changed before BW2, but I want to point out something here.

You state that Politoed is merely to put up weather and die. No back up plan? Politoed only loses to Abomasnow due to typing, yet you have no backup plan for if and when you lose the weather war. If Politoed is just sac bait, try a set with maximum bulk, and protect/tox/rain dance/scald. That way you can stall, scout, and swap out, and if you come in on their weatherman (slower weather) you can set new weather on them.

The other idea is to throw it on Tornadus (I think he learns it?) for prankster speed rain.

- The Tornadus set only ever loses if it gets the lower hand in being behind on the Substitutes, then killed by a priority move. I know when to predict this, and so leave as much health as possible there so I can still strike back. Putting Timid on Tornadus seems quite strange, as Torny gets no Special Attack boosts and peaks at 384. The reason for it being able to devastate is due to having STAB Hurricane, which is converted to a base of 180. Timid Tornadus wouldn't be able to OHKO, and is the reason I run Salac strategy over Petaya.
NOTE: Tornadus at 1.5x from Salac does outspeed Scarf Keldeo and Terrakion. I just need to get down to 25% and it's all good

- BlankZero, forgive me, I have nothing against Weatherless teams, it strays them away from the usual weather junk in OU. Its when its named OU Weatherless, raters seem to flock to it and I've never understood why.
And I overexaggerated in my description of Politoed. I don't like using him, but its necessary for the team's success. I obviously don't switch him out or sack him when put up against a positive matchup, so I do use him to an extent. I just don't use him anywhere near as much as the other members.

Really? Most of which I see and I've played against run Adamant or Jolly, because Tornadus is 111 base he outspeeds all the other OU neutral speed threats:/
Well when I come across one I'll figure out something, but Scarf Terrakion is not really that common anymore. Nearly every Keldeo is Scarfed, but Terrakion usually run SR or Rock Polish nowadays.

It's all good. To be fair, I name my teams based on what they are, and until I get more of a name around here, it's a bit better than a catchy title for drawing in raters.

Anyhow, I'm glad Politoed isn't sack bait, but take a look at my RMT. Someone just made an interesting suggestion on my team that drives my point home about needing a rain dancer somewhere else on the team.

Really? Most of which I see and I've played against run Adamant or Jolly, because Tornadus is 111 base he outspeeds all the other OU neutral speed threats:/

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Also add Latios to this.

I'd say most are running max speed with a scarf. You'll get a nasty surprise if your Tornadus falls to one one of these scarfed Pokemon, if you're wanting to use Sub Salac to ensure you outspeed, definitely go with Timid for security.

Something that I cannot stress more is that Tornadus' SpA is easily contested when not at a +SpA nature. It is in the low 300s, and does not work to its fullest potential.
You cannot prepare one Pokemon to beat all the threats in the metagame. The team in a whole is prepared against it. Certain threats that will beat Tornadus, I obviously will not use it against them.

Yeah, in general, Scarf Terrakions are running +speed because they need to beat themselves, since Terrakion can easily OHKO other Terrakion with Close Combat.

That said I think overall your team is pretty well equipped to deal with them. Scizor and Feraligatr are both going to tear apart Terrakion with their priority moves (It's just going to run away, but you know, whatever works), though Keldeo might be a little more problematic. Your best bet against Keldeo that outrun your Tornadus is probably Reuniclus, but that sounds dangerous to attempt.